


land of the dreaming

by SongofThunder



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Gen, Link has problems, Okay I'll stop talking now, Post-Calamity Ganon, Post-Canon, haha did you notice if you put calamity and ganon together you get canon, sometimes, zelda's trying really hard to fix them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19244191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongofThunder/pseuds/SongofThunder
Summary: the shrine of resurrection works in strange ways, not all of them pleasant. link dreams during his slumber.





	land of the dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the bare bones of this fic almost exactly a year ago: June 12, 2018, at 10:06 PM. At least, that's what my phone says. I then proceeded to discover it three days ago, edit it, and send it out into the Great Wide Internet.  
> No, I don't have any more ideas as to where to go with this, so no, I will not be continuing. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to build off of it.

Stars out, the fire crackling and popping in a merry, off-key tune, orange glow lighting the walls of the outcropping they were to rest under for the night. Tomorrow was another day, Zelda thought, stirring the cooking pot. They would need much rest for the trek.

She was getting better at her cooking, thanks to Link’s guidance. Not perfect, but _so_ much better. Right now her cuisine was mainly limited to stews and soups, but they all came out edible! Admittedly, it was a marked improvement the moment he’d taught her to stop using lizards, frogs, and insects in anything but elixirs; rather than constantly ending up with a mangled meal of… _questionable_ purity. She smiled, tapping her spoon thrice at the edge of the pot. _Perfect._

Now, where was Link?

“Link?” she called. “Link, where are you?”

No answer; she left her spoon in the pot, took it off the fire, and glanced towards the darkness, one hand up to cover the glow of the fire, lest it hinder what little night vision she had.

“Link,” she murmured softly, and squinted- yes, there was a silhouette of a humanoid figure, sitting alone. Or, it could be a crouching lizal- but there had been so few ever since Ganon had been sealed. Far less confidence, far less power, far less of them, period.

“Link,” she repeated upon arriving. “Link, the soup is- oh, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” came the answer almost instantaneously. “It’s nothing. I’m just not hungry.”

“You mustn’t lie,” she chided. “You have been off all day.” Staring off into space, spending an inordinate amount of time moving… far slower than usual. “Please, what’s wrong?”

Link looked up at her; then slowly, slowly slid his gaze back to the darkness in front of them.

“It’s nothing,” he repeated.

“It’s not,” she replied stubbornly. “Link. Whatever it is, please let me know.”

Trust and a little too much knowledge of the other; that was what their relationship was based on. She knew already there was something off about today; normally it didn’t take too much prodding for him to let it out, and vice versa. This time did not seem to be any different.

She awaited his answer. Link let out a sigh and didn’t move.

Seconds ticked by.

“I’m afraid,” he said off-handedly, and didn’t elaborate.

“Afraid of what?” Although the question _what is there to be afraid of_ floated to the surface, she shoved down the thought- how many times had she herself been afraid of nothing? Of something irrational, yet terrifying nonetheless?”

“Afraid of…” Link trailed off, then stopped abruptly. Zelda contemplated his answer silently, never once taking her eyes off him.

Then he spoke.

“Today’s the day.”

Zelda waited patiently; Link took in a breath, a shuddering, quiet, thing, and continued.

“Today,” he said, “marks the six hundred and eighty-third day since I woke from the Shrine of Resurrection. Not... Not counting the day I… ah… awakened.”

Zelda blinked, already feeling the confusion bubbling to the surface. “I don’t understand.”

A quick, sharp sigh; a tired smile. “It’s okay. You don’t have to. This is just...” He made a wide, vague gesture. “This is exactly how far I got... the first time I-“

Alarm flashed through her, and she stood up immediately. “The first time?”

“The first time I woke up.”

“You… You what?’ The gears in her mind turned, and Zelda mentally racked her brain. Had he mentioned anything like this before?

“Link, are you alright? Is your head- Perhaps you are recalling some other memory? I don’t-”

"No!” he burst out, and then covered his mouth with an almost- was that a _fearful_ expression?

“No,” he repeated quietly. “I just…" A pause. "I was awake."

"What?"

"Well... not really, but... Some time after you put me in the Shrine of Resurrection, I guess I woke up."

Zelda's eyes widened, and she froze. He didn’t mean when she had woken him- she knew that. But- if he had been awake for a hundred years, trapped in a suffocating space and unable to see _anything_ the whole time he was-

Link's eyes widened too, at what he had said. "No! I didn't mean it like that! I just mean-" He rubbed his head. "I-I need to sit down. Let’s go back."

Leading her to one of the logs back by the fire, Zelda could feel the concern etched into her face. Obviously, whatever he was thinking of agitated him; she had never seen him this… afraid. Or nervous- what _emotion_ was that? She could not quite place it. But either way- she would have to quell these thoughts, before they led to worse fates... depression and the like.

Mentally, she slapped herself for thinking of Link as a subject. He was a living, breathing person, and he was her friend.

He was her _friend._ Had been for a long while now. And he was white as a sheet and fidgeting and it _hurt_ . It wasn’t even her pain, but there was a strong urge to make it _better._ It was the least she could do after what he had done for _her._

Link spoke again without prompting from her. "I think... I think I was dreaming, Zelda.”

“Dreaming?”

A nod. “Yeah. Dreaming… Dreaming sounds about right. It felt like I… It felt like I woke up before the slumber was finished. And everything was dark, and I couldn’t move, but I could… feel. Do you- do you know what I’m saying?”

Now it was her turn to give assent. “Yes.” What he had described- that was _exactly_ how she had felt the beginning of the hundred years.

“Zelda, I-I called to get out. No one came. So I stayed there for a few days, until... the roof lifted, and I saw _light,_ and I was able to sit up and step out.”

And what I saw... I saw Hyrule in _ruin_ . Because you and I... we _failed_.” That haunted look in his eyes, seeing what should never have been seen-

“Everything was over. The sky was red, and the castle wasn’t much more than piles of bricks, and trees were torn up, and all over the plateau there were monsters, and Guardians, and there was _nothing left_ , Zelda.” Link rocked back and forth to try to calm himself, and she took his hand to steady him. “There was nothing left. I followed the paths, I ran from Guardians, I walked to Zora's Domain, Rito Village, Hateno and Deya and Kakariko and Ordon- and they were all in ruin. I can still remember- the crumbling architecture, the rotting wood- and every one of them was overtaken by malice. The Guardians were still active- I spent my days running from them and foraging from what they left behind.” He stopped abruptly, then continued. “Every waking hour I spent searching for you. Or Mipha. Or Daruk, or Urbosa, or Revali, or anyone at all.” Link drew in a shaky breath. “And Zelda- I think even then I knew it was a dream. Every day, I told myself- _wake up, Link, wake up_ . Zelda did it. You _saw_ her. Before you-” He cut himself off and stared into the embers of the fire- clearly nothing he wanted to talk about.

“But every day, I didn't wake up,” he continued. “And then when I was _finally_ accepting that _this_ was the fate of Hyrule, and that everything I loved was _over_ and anyone left alive like me would be gone soon-” Finally, he turned to look at her, and met her eyes. “ _That’s_ when you woke me up. Six hundred and eighty-three days after I first stepped out of the Shrine of Resurrection. And I forgot _everything_. Whatever I was dreaming, your name, the champions, my entire life.” A soft chuckle- more sad than bitter, Zelda thought- as Link dropped his gaze and looked away. “I don’t know why I remember it now. I just know everything started getting clearer after we- after you- sealed Ganon.” Link inhaled deeply a couple times, and Zelda scooted closer to him in a small attempt at comfort.

“So what I'm afraid of is..." He trailed off.

"That you'll forget again,” she breathed. “You’re afraid this is all another dream, and that you'll wake up to a worse one. And that if you accept that this is not a dream, the same thing will happen as last time.”

She'd taken the words right out of his mouth.

A quick nod. "Yeah."

"Oh, Link…” Zelda reached a hand out to place on his shoulder. “It's not just a dream."

A bitter, tired smile. "That's what they said in the other one, too."


End file.
